


that story unknown to all

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Eternal Punishment, F/M, Gen, Post-Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 15:11:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11923539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: The shrine is where everything begins and ends.





	that story unknown to all

He watches Ginko cry for a very long time, sitting at the foot of the shrine – sob after defeated sob sounding painful and strangled out of her mouth and her fingers rubbing uselessly at her brimming eyes in an attempt to contain her sorrow – and Michel winces at the observation, because he knows he isn’t supposed to think of her as  _that_ ; the wrong name, a childish moniker they were supposed to have left behind on their way to this new world, forgotten like Maya's blood spilled across Tatsuya’s hands and the dust of their crumbling city, abandoned by Earth. Like so many other things they’d forced themselves to let go of when they took Philemon’s deal.

(None of that matters now, not anymore, but he knows now that it’s Tatsuya who’d sacrificed it all to make sure of that, and Michel supposes that’s why he feels this sharp pang of guilt at thinking of the girl in front of him not as her first name but as the nickname he’d bestowed on her first and foremost: so instinctive and unconscious, it might as well be that no time at all has passed between their mutual farewell and the lifetime spent apart that followed it. He can do this – can continue to do this – because he’s allowed to. There are no repercussions for him. The same cannot be said for Tatsuya.)

The second reason: he’s crying too. His meticulously-applied eyeliner is smudging badly and there’s a distinct trace of wetness running down his white-powdered face, and if Ginko were herself she’d have stood up and laughed, called him a sad excuse for a clown or, or something lame like that, punching him on the shoulder all the while – but he reminds himself that she’s Lisa, that he has no right to expect such things from someone who, at least in this reality, is a stranger, a potential name in an ever-expanding list of would-be fangirls. So the tears keep falling. The pain of her knuckles against his bones remains a phantom one, reconstructed from memory.

Light streams in through the gaps in the trees shading the shrine, casting skeletal foliage-shaped shadows on them and the ground beneath their shoes. The browning leaves shift with the early autumn wind, brittle and bone-chilling. She’s cried herself empty, and from the way she’s looking up at him right now – with something unreadable surfacing from the depths of her red-ringed eyes – so has he.

Michel wipes the rest of his tears on his sleeve, and, struck with self-consciousness, cringes at the resulting stains. Ginko searches the fold of her skirt pocket for a second before offering up her hand to him, a folded handkerchief sitting unceremoniously on her upturned palm, and as he accepts it he thinks that maybe in this moment she’s Lisa after all: the girl he remembers knowing from back then wouldn’t have bothered with such placid niceties, at least not so brazenly, and less so when it concerns him. Maybe some things do change.

Their fingertips don’t quite brush but she scoffs a little, glances away, and says “you need this more than I do,” when he shoots her a hesitating look – and if it doesn’t quite make him feel better then it reassures him enough that he feels himself smiling, just barely. But then the memory of all they were and all they can’t be resurfaces and in an instant, the pleasant knot of tension on his face loosens.

“Uh – sorry,” he says when he returns the handkerchief, feeling expectant, but she just takes it, unrecognizably wordless. A moment passes, and suddenly he finds himself asking, at loss: “This is what he would’ve wanted, right?”

The question is directed as much to himself as it is to her, but both of them know neither they nor the other can provide a satisfying answer.

The girl, for her part, says nothing. Ginko’s eyes are turned to the clouds; the color of the sky, pale and shaded, mirrors her irises. His gaze starts to follow hers, and they stay that way for a moment, silent and trying to search for the line separating this world and the broken one they’d left behind, the one where he is – wondering if they squint just the right way they’ll see a mirage of him, his ever-unreadable eyes looking up at the same distant point on the horizon. Silly, all of it, but it’d been Maya who’d told them a dream was a beautiful thing to have; it wouldn’t hurt to cling to those words of comfort now, if only to soften the blow.

Ginko exhales. “I won’t cry again." This, she says to herself, but he hears it all the same.

Michel doesn’t need to ask to know that no matter what, semantics be damned, she’ll always be in love with the boy who left her for the world’s greater good. And if she’ll continue looking for her Tatsuya in the face of the boy who passes her in the hall – who doesn’t remember her as anything other than a pesky junior, her name to him Lisa and nothing more – then she’ll do so without knowing that Michel, in his own way, will do the same. There’s no need for telling; he has faith the unspoken understanding they shared in their past life will pull through for them in this one.

So he doesn’t ask.

“I won’t, either.” His hand hovers over her shoulder, not quite touching it, before he retracts it again. Mustering up a greater resolve, he says: “We gotta live the rest of our life the best we can. For Tacchan. We promised we wouldn’t forget, right? We can promise this for him, too. Right, Ginko?”

She’s looking at her shoes. Her voice is still watery when she says, “Yeah.” Something in the syllable makes his heart sink – maybe it’s the way she sounds not so much sad as acquiescing, blandly resigning to fate’s whims at last. She lifts her chin up slightly, her lips a thin, faint curve. Her hands wrap around her elbows; she must be getting cold. “I – I never thought hearing that name again would make me so sad, you know. You gave it to me. It’s all your fault.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s all my fault.”

He might not be able to think of her as anything else but the silver girl he met that summer day when they were both children and the sun shone gold, high above their heads, but he can try to live the rest of his life to its fullest from this day on. He knows Tatsuya would have wanted that, at the very least.

So when Jun – no, he corrects quickly, Kashihara-senpai – walks up to them, something heavy and set in his eyes, Michel stretches out one arm towards her, pulling her up to her feet, and she lets him.

The gesture is effortless. Her hand is small inside his, softer and warmer than all the times he’d felt her angry fist slam against his undeserving face would lead him to expect, and there’s a sense of finality in the way her fingers slip out of his: easily.

“Kashihara-senpai,” Michel says, turning around, half-surprised despite himself, “what are you doing here?”

(Like the feeling of something halted, finally setting into motion again.)

**Author's Note:**

> uhh wowaka released a new song? it's amazing? i'm crying rn
> 
> in both p2 games the interactions between the strength junkie and the agility junkie are always so interesting haha i couldn't resist, me + vocaloid + all-nighter is a bad combo, apologies 2 everyone and p2 canon. also like im saying goodbye to this tag etc


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